Text/Hao Jingfang
Source/Reader Magazine Issue 24, 2019
Two years ago, I was invited by the Harvard University Representative Office in China to give a lecture to a youth camp.
The members of this camp are selected from various high schools, and they are all top students.
I used the same topic for both lectures: May you be brave and smart all your life.
I talked about the problems that cleverness may encounter, and I also talked about my suggestions and gave encouragement.
After the two lectures, children came to me.
After the first game, a boy said to me: "You are right, I am the kind of person who can do everything very quickly, and I have won many competition awards, but I don't know how to find motivation."
After the end of the second game, several children ran backstage, and a girl said: "I fully understand what you are talking about. I am just like you described. I have always been the first place since I was a child, but my heart is very fragile in many cases. ."
Being smart is a feature that is easy to recognize, and smart kids are also very easy to be held in the palm of the people around them. But also because of this, smart children can easily face some common problems.
I have always been said to be "smart" since I was a child: I never did a test, but I always took the first place; after elementary school, I played outdoors until dark, and after middle school, I went to play basketball; Be a host in school, be a campus TV station, participate in theatrical performances, and participate in school student unions; learning does not require parental supervision.
All in all, I have never felt how hard it is to study.
The real difficulty I experienced was the perception of myself and things deep in my heart when I graduated from university and faced the choice of life.
When I was in college, I fell into the dilemma of "self-doubt" for a while: my grades and hobbies were not outstanding, and the writing I wanted to work for did not make any progress.
At this time, I keep setting "achievement" goals for myself,Fancy that you can shine in some ways. But reality often backfires, which makes me very anxious.
It wasn't until several years later that I slowly discovered the crux of the problem: I confused the feeling of "success" with the feeling of things themselves.
Take swimming as an example. If I like to win first place and stand on the podium, then thinking more about swimming is the steps to success.
But if what I like is swimming itself, then when swimming, I may pay more attention to the feeling of the body when it is in contact with water. The wonderful changes in the body under water, the touch of the arm when the muscles are mobilized to push the water surface, I think more purely Details about the body and movements.
The paradox is that in many areas of life, the former mentality is not as good as the latter mentality and can bring real success.
The first time I realized this was in a private cello lesson. At that time, I had been studying for two or three years, and my goal was to be able to play at the year-end party that year.
But once in class, the teacher interrupted my performance and asked me bluntly: "Did you not listen to your performance? Can you really not hear the sound itself?" I found out , I do not feel the sound wholeheartedly, I only care about the progress of the etude.
This incident gave me a lot of excitement. I began to slowly feel how other people are fully engaged when they really like something.
When dancing, focus on the sensations of muscles and body; when writing, focus on the subtle emotions triggered by memory; when studying mathematics, focus on the meaning of both sides of the equation.
I envy their kind of heartfelt concentration, they can immerse themselves in it every day, without letting the progress review anytime and anywhere disturb their minds.
One cannot sink one's heart to feel things. It is the biggest obstacle hindering people's progress in any field.
For me, the easily obtained results from childhood to large make me mistakenly think that the sense of accomplishment is equal to interest.
I want to try various things, many of which are not because I have deep love,It's because I like to "tick" myself: You see I have mastered a new skill, you see me this or that, everything is good.
And true life achievement belongs to the ultimate deep one. In the wider world, in the longer life, it is the extreme sensitivity and enthusiasm for one thing that allows a person to find a way to climb. It's as if there is only him and what he is doing in the world, that kind of concentration makes the heart surging like the ocean.
Listening to a note is like the universe contained in the note; deducing a formula, willing to be like a day for decades; writing a line of code, as if the whole world is quiet...
wants to make something important in the real world You need to break yourself up, forget all the past, and find the kind of innocent heart when you start climbing from the foot of the mountain.
There are too many mountains in this world. Climbing each mountain requires exhausting all your life, step by step.
If there is no love in the heart, there is no choice at all. And if there is no sensitive self-awareness, there is no way to produce true love.
Only by throwing away all the baggage that cleverness brings to oneself, returning to the original aspiration, and finding something that can really make you cry, can you gain the long-term strength to support your life.
May you be brave and smart all your life.
Author: Hao Jingfang, Source: "Reader" Magazine, Issue 24, 2019, with the original title "No matter how smart, it can't be compared to true love."
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